Corsair V128 Nova Review
Main Testing
Published: 19th April 2010 | Source: Corsair | Price: £292.72 |
Main Tests
ATTO Disk Benchmark
ATTO is one of the best SSD tests around. Many HDD based testers can't handle SSDs easily, but ATTO handles them with aplomb.
In our read tests the performance of both drives is very similar, with the Corsair just missing its 270MB/s acclaimed performance, but still handily smashing past the 250MB/s barrier. Blazing speed doesn't begin to cover it.
In write tests it was even more impressive. Corsair claim 195MB/s but we saw 197MB/s come up regularly.
The main point of note here is the huge difference between the Corsair and the Crucial when dealing with very large or very small segments. Although the Crucial M225 has a lead between 128K and 1024K, at the other extremes it's well behind the Corsair Nova.
Crystal Disk Mark
New to our testing is Crystal Disk Mark 3.0. This has added two new features, 64bit support and the QD32 test. With such a huge file chunk, and a different method of testing, neither drive match the pure speed of the ATTO test, but the results are similar with the Corsair Nova proving to be one of the best performing drives we've seen.
Everest Ultimate
As plain old speed tests can become tiresome, especially with SSDs which have a certain performance and pretty much any test will hit it, here we're using Everest Ultimate to plot a read graph so you can see that the sustained transfer performance is just as impressive as the out and out speed.
PC Mark Vantage
As a reviewer you have a love/hate relationships with benchmarking software. On the one hand they give you hard and fast results which is something we all adore. But on the other hand they do take up enormous amount of time. After all, the best way to get a result is to run a test that is repeatable, and this repeatability takes time. PC Mark Vantage is one of those packages that breaks this rule by covering so many different real-world tests that it saves time and is a boon to testing the performance of a system.
In every test the Corsair was noticeably faster and "snappier" than the Crucial. Considering that the Crucial is by no means a slow drive this is impressive indeed.
Finally we'll look at some game loading times.
Most Recent Comments
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Originally Posted by name='Chewbacca'
I want one! Does it really make that much of a difference going from a normal HDD to an SSD?
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At such a low capacity, u would probably end up using ur old drive as a means to store stuff, leaving mainly the OS, and ur malware etc on the SSD.
For definite, if the cash is available and u don't use much harddrive space, they're great. But apparently having the cash to buy a pc component is not meant to be the way to look at it, ur meant to look at them value for money. Bang for buck. Speed for sure - capacity (the bread and butter of drives) a definite no. Some people will buy these then complain about the prices of other things, e.g.
I use them in many pc/mac setups now and tbh, if ur OS is installed and maintained efficiently, there are just as viable alternatives, leaving u to spend ur cash on more important components.
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Originally Posted by name='nunzio'
What I would like to see as a test is if you keep your OS/System on a hdd, and put the games installed on the ssd, would that make much of a difference?
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/digs up results
With the OS and game installed on a P128, a level in Crysis loaded in 18s, compared to 22s with the OS on a 7200.11 and the game installed on the P128. Game and OS on the 7200.11 was 40s.
So there's still a hefty benefit, but really you get the most from an SSD when you use it as an OS and game data drive (for gamers).
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